Book Report - "The Sin of Certainty" by Peter Enns
“The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our ‘Correct’ Beliefs” is a controversial take on Christianity from controversial author Peter Enns. I didn’t realize before I picked it up just what I was getting myself into, but I am tremendously glad I experienced this book.
Modern Christianity exists in a weird space where the Bible tells us some things about the world and scientific experts tell us often contradictory things. Many Bible literalists believe Earth is only about 6,000 years old, but science tells us Earth is closer to 4.5 billion years old. Evolution is a bad word among evangelicals, but Charles Darwin and most biologists since are fairly confident that species today evolved from common ancestors in the distant past. Some extremists even go so far as to say that God built the world as a firmament, so we live on a flat plane with an impassable dome above us. I can’t imagine that’s the majority of believers, but those people exist.
Suffice it to say, there is stark contrast and often animosity between Christians and scientists. Many Christians assert that scientists are simply trying to strip away the faith of believers, and scientists often criticize Christians for ignoring so blatantly obvious truths produced by years of research and study. Much like the bipartisan politics of American voters, the loudest voices are polarized and aggressive, and they leave very little space for compromise in the middle.
Then there’s me, and people like me. I find no problem with the intersection of faith and science. I believe you can practice religion and still accept the big bang as the origin of the universe. People who treat the Bible as a scientifically accurate source because of its status as the “inerrant word of God” maybe missed the fact that we simply didn’t know the scientific things then that we know now. The heliocentric model of the solar system didn’t exist before the 1500s. I don’t think it’s a problem that the human authors of the Bible had an incorrect understanding of several things in our universe at the time.
What I mean to say is that the Bible is primarily a book about faith. There are historical references, and I figure that they’re mostly accurate in many cases, but the Bible isn’t a history book. I’m going to forgive historical inaccuracies because that isn’t the point. Similarly, the author of Jonah was most likely not an ichthyologist, so I think it’s safe to say that the “big fish” that swallowed Jonah was more likely a whale. Staunch literalists will swear it had to be specifically a fish, but I think anything large that swims around in the water is more or less a big fish even if it isn’t genetically a fish.
I digress. My worldview is perfectly content to accept the Bible as the honest word of God while also understanding the validity of modern science. You can absolutely have both. The problem is that so few people seem to exist in that space. Many believers reject any science that works counter to their understanding of the Bible. On the other hand, atheists such as Stephen Hawking suggest that “if you accept, as I do, that the laws of nature are fixed, then it doesn't take long to ask: What role is there for God?” Relegating God to nothing more than an answer for the unknowns of the universe misses the whole point of religion.
For many years, my existence in the middle of two warring factions concerned me. Was I broken for not subscribing to one mentality or the other? Was I somehow missing some obvious factor that made acceptance of both sides impossible? It seemed like a problem with me, rather than society or the individual schools of thought. Clearly, I was missing something important.
I’m not entirely alone in this space, but it is very sparse. If I bring up scientific theories with religious zealots, they worry that I’m doubting God and questioning my faith. Alternatively, if I bring up religious topics with academic peers, I am often immediately panned as an idiot. What intelligent person believes in God?
Imagine my surprise when Enns, an author that I had assumed Christian, brings up forty thousand year old cave paintings or practitioners of ancient religions that were “worshiping some deity or deities about eleven thousand years ago, predating creation in the Bible by five thousand years.” These were concerns that I had considered internally or brought up cautiously with other people occasionally, but I would never be so brazen as to commit the idea to text and publish it in a book. What was this guy on about? I mean, I’m for it, but he was treading in dangerous territory.
Elsewhere in the book, Enns jokes “It’s hard to imagine talking like this in church. Letting your guard down and bearing your soul with this degree of raw honesty is risky. You might find yourself in the middle of a protect-you-from-atheism intervention prayer phone chain faster than you can say ‘Bill Maher.’ Or you might be judged as a weak or uncommitted Christian and shunned.” I laughed audibly at this one as we listened to the audiobook while driving down the road, and my oldest son asked me what was funny about it. I couldn’t fully explain how several churches are, and just how refreshing it was to hear someone reference similar experiences.
Enns constantly throws out examples of how the Bible doesn’t quite line up with modern science, and then explains how those conflicts don’t actually cause a problem with faith in today’s world. It was amazing to finally realize that there are other people with belief systems similar to mine. Furthermore, it was validating to know that I could accept both faith and science without myself being a walking contradiction.
Although these historical inaccuracies in scripture were important, Enns is mostly making the point that our confidence in how we understand scripture in our heads is actively harmful to having a healthy faith. If your faith is mostly supported by your own “correct thinking” about God, all it takes is one example of how you were wrong before the entire tower comes crumbling down. Faith, Enns explains, should be more about trusting IN God, rather than trusting our own knowledge or thoughts ABOUT God. That was huge for me.
Perhaps the most comforting segment of this book comes from a prayer that Enns quotes from Thomas Merton:
“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
If my faith and my salvation hinge on me being correct, that’s terrifying. I’m wrong. A lot. Even in computer science, my own area of expertise, there are plenty of times that I am incorrect in some assertion or belief. And that’s with some really low stakes. In most cases, I can just correct myself and move on. At worst, perhaps I lose a job or fail to get a job that I am interviewing for. How much more consequential, then, is the life or death eternal result of salvation? I would hate to be banking on my own correct thoughts about God to save me.
The whole book is full of fantastic quotes and one-liners to shed some light on a fairly difficult subject. This serves the purpose of giving us simple analogies to compare to, but it also disarms us and allows us to speak frankly about a subject that often gets very heated. When it comes to religion, people are often keyed up and ready for a fight as soon as someone mentions God. I think that by creating this sort of safe space where people can discuss their opinions without fear of condemnation or aggression, it allows us to really explore what we believe and ask questions of both ourselves and of God. It’s like a therapy session where we are both the patient and the therapist.
I do want to qualify, this book will probably not resonate with everyone. If you are in one of those two camps I mentioned before, science-denying Christian or religion-denying scientist, you may hate this book. You may pan it as trash and off-base from the very beginning. I recognize that some folks just are not in a mental space where they can accept these ideas. That’s fine. In the same way that I realized I’m not broken, I’ll tell you that you aren’t broken. How you deal with both science and religion is your own personal decision.
No matter if you agree with the concepts in this book or not, I do think it’s helpful to read. I would recommend it for the same reason that I would recommend Christians read other holy books, or anyone investigate the mentality and understanding of an opponent. It helps us understand our own thoughts and opinions better by comparing them with the people we disagree with. You can finish the book feeling exactly how you felt before, but I think consuming someone else’s opinions and beliefs should equip you to understand your own beliefs better. Don’t simply ignore it because you disagree with the concepts at a high level.
Like most controversial things in life, I think the best approach is for people to read it themselves and make up their own mind about it. People can praise or condemn something all they want, but individuals shouldn’t trust someone else to make a decision for them. Reviews of “The Sin of Certainty” range from calling Enns a heretic, apostate, and agnostic pretending to be Christian, all the way to high compliments for avoiding the science denial that many religious folks are so known for. Clearly, I liked the book, but I can’t make up someone else’s mind for them.
Read this book with as open a mind as possible. If you are a practicing Christian, read it for another perspective on Christ. Atheist or agnostic, read it to understand we aren’t all flat-earth conspiracy theorists. Practitioners of other religions, I would love to see how it might help you consider your own holy book in a different light. Whether you agree or disagree with Enns or with myself, I think everyone would benefit from at least investigating another approach to Christianity.
Modern Christianity exists in a weird space where the Bible tells us some things about the world and scientific experts tell us often contradictory things. Many Bible literalists believe Earth is only about 6,000 years old, but science tells us Earth is closer to 4.5 billion years old. Evolution is a bad word among evangelicals, but Charles Darwin and most biologists since are fairly confident that species today evolved from common ancestors in the distant past. Some extremists even go so far as to say that God built the world as a firmament, so we live on a flat plane with an impassable dome above us. I can’t imagine that’s the majority of believers, but those people exist.
Suffice it to say, there is stark contrast and often animosity between Christians and scientists. Many Christians assert that scientists are simply trying to strip away the faith of believers, and scientists often criticize Christians for ignoring so blatantly obvious truths produced by years of research and study. Much like the bipartisan politics of American voters, the loudest voices are polarized and aggressive, and they leave very little space for compromise in the middle.
Then there’s me, and people like me. I find no problem with the intersection of faith and science. I believe you can practice religion and still accept the big bang as the origin of the universe. People who treat the Bible as a scientifically accurate source because of its status as the “inerrant word of God” maybe missed the fact that we simply didn’t know the scientific things then that we know now. The heliocentric model of the solar system didn’t exist before the 1500s. I don’t think it’s a problem that the human authors of the Bible had an incorrect understanding of several things in our universe at the time.
What I mean to say is that the Bible is primarily a book about faith. There are historical references, and I figure that they’re mostly accurate in many cases, but the Bible isn’t a history book. I’m going to forgive historical inaccuracies because that isn’t the point. Similarly, the author of Jonah was most likely not an ichthyologist, so I think it’s safe to say that the “big fish” that swallowed Jonah was more likely a whale. Staunch literalists will swear it had to be specifically a fish, but I think anything large that swims around in the water is more or less a big fish even if it isn’t genetically a fish.
I digress. My worldview is perfectly content to accept the Bible as the honest word of God while also understanding the validity of modern science. You can absolutely have both. The problem is that so few people seem to exist in that space. Many believers reject any science that works counter to their understanding of the Bible. On the other hand, atheists such as Stephen Hawking suggest that “if you accept, as I do, that the laws of nature are fixed, then it doesn't take long to ask: What role is there for God?” Relegating God to nothing more than an answer for the unknowns of the universe misses the whole point of religion.
For many years, my existence in the middle of two warring factions concerned me. Was I broken for not subscribing to one mentality or the other? Was I somehow missing some obvious factor that made acceptance of both sides impossible? It seemed like a problem with me, rather than society or the individual schools of thought. Clearly, I was missing something important.
I’m not entirely alone in this space, but it is very sparse. If I bring up scientific theories with religious zealots, they worry that I’m doubting God and questioning my faith. Alternatively, if I bring up religious topics with academic peers, I am often immediately panned as an idiot. What intelligent person believes in God?
Imagine my surprise when Enns, an author that I had assumed Christian, brings up forty thousand year old cave paintings or practitioners of ancient religions that were “worshiping some deity or deities about eleven thousand years ago, predating creation in the Bible by five thousand years.” These were concerns that I had considered internally or brought up cautiously with other people occasionally, but I would never be so brazen as to commit the idea to text and publish it in a book. What was this guy on about? I mean, I’m for it, but he was treading in dangerous territory.
Elsewhere in the book, Enns jokes “It’s hard to imagine talking like this in church. Letting your guard down and bearing your soul with this degree of raw honesty is risky. You might find yourself in the middle of a protect-you-from-atheism intervention prayer phone chain faster than you can say ‘Bill Maher.’ Or you might be judged as a weak or uncommitted Christian and shunned.” I laughed audibly at this one as we listened to the audiobook while driving down the road, and my oldest son asked me what was funny about it. I couldn’t fully explain how several churches are, and just how refreshing it was to hear someone reference similar experiences.
Enns constantly throws out examples of how the Bible doesn’t quite line up with modern science, and then explains how those conflicts don’t actually cause a problem with faith in today’s world. It was amazing to finally realize that there are other people with belief systems similar to mine. Furthermore, it was validating to know that I could accept both faith and science without myself being a walking contradiction.
Although these historical inaccuracies in scripture were important, Enns is mostly making the point that our confidence in how we understand scripture in our heads is actively harmful to having a healthy faith. If your faith is mostly supported by your own “correct thinking” about God, all it takes is one example of how you were wrong before the entire tower comes crumbling down. Faith, Enns explains, should be more about trusting IN God, rather than trusting our own knowledge or thoughts ABOUT God. That was huge for me.
Perhaps the most comforting segment of this book comes from a prayer that Enns quotes from Thomas Merton:
“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
If my faith and my salvation hinge on me being correct, that’s terrifying. I’m wrong. A lot. Even in computer science, my own area of expertise, there are plenty of times that I am incorrect in some assertion or belief. And that’s with some really low stakes. In most cases, I can just correct myself and move on. At worst, perhaps I lose a job or fail to get a job that I am interviewing for. How much more consequential, then, is the life or death eternal result of salvation? I would hate to be banking on my own correct thoughts about God to save me.
The whole book is full of fantastic quotes and one-liners to shed some light on a fairly difficult subject. This serves the purpose of giving us simple analogies to compare to, but it also disarms us and allows us to speak frankly about a subject that often gets very heated. When it comes to religion, people are often keyed up and ready for a fight as soon as someone mentions God. I think that by creating this sort of safe space where people can discuss their opinions without fear of condemnation or aggression, it allows us to really explore what we believe and ask questions of both ourselves and of God. It’s like a therapy session where we are both the patient and the therapist.
I do want to qualify, this book will probably not resonate with everyone. If you are in one of those two camps I mentioned before, science-denying Christian or religion-denying scientist, you may hate this book. You may pan it as trash and off-base from the very beginning. I recognize that some folks just are not in a mental space where they can accept these ideas. That’s fine. In the same way that I realized I’m not broken, I’ll tell you that you aren’t broken. How you deal with both science and religion is your own personal decision.
No matter if you agree with the concepts in this book or not, I do think it’s helpful to read. I would recommend it for the same reason that I would recommend Christians read other holy books, or anyone investigate the mentality and understanding of an opponent. It helps us understand our own thoughts and opinions better by comparing them with the people we disagree with. You can finish the book feeling exactly how you felt before, but I think consuming someone else’s opinions and beliefs should equip you to understand your own beliefs better. Don’t simply ignore it because you disagree with the concepts at a high level.
Like most controversial things in life, I think the best approach is for people to read it themselves and make up their own mind about it. People can praise or condemn something all they want, but individuals shouldn’t trust someone else to make a decision for them. Reviews of “The Sin of Certainty” range from calling Enns a heretic, apostate, and agnostic pretending to be Christian, all the way to high compliments for avoiding the science denial that many religious folks are so known for. Clearly, I liked the book, but I can’t make up someone else’s mind for them.
Read this book with as open a mind as possible. If you are a practicing Christian, read it for another perspective on Christ. Atheist or agnostic, read it to understand we aren’t all flat-earth conspiracy theorists. Practitioners of other religions, I would love to see how it might help you consider your own holy book in a different light. Whether you agree or disagree with Enns or with myself, I think everyone would benefit from at least investigating another approach to Christianity.
Comments
Post a Comment